These are the books I read this year. Six thousand nine hundred and sixty one pages of bookish goodness, in order of recommendation (within each category)…

Fiction:

Netherland by Joseph O’Neill

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

City of Thieves by David Benioff

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

Alphabet Weekends by Elizabeth Noble

Goodnight Nobody by Jennifer Weiner

Until I Find You by John Irving

Non-Fiction:

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

The End of Overeating by David Kessler

Tell Me Where It Hurts by Nick Trout

Woman: An Intimate Geography by Natalie Angier

Currently reading: SuperFreakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

Up next: The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande

“You danced at our wedding,” she answered immediately.  “You were fine.  You did that little shuffle thing with your feet.”

“She looked stricken; and I suppose, since I am now fully aware, thanks to our figuratively speaking marriage counselor, that the steamboat of marriage must be fed incessantly with the coals of communication, that I should have explained to my wife that I came from Holland, where I rarely saw dancing, and indeed that I’d been a little amazed to see how young Englishmen threw themselves around to music, dancing even with other men, and that this abandon was alien to me and that, perhaps, she might for this reason wish to bear with me.  But I said nothing, thinking the matter inconsequential.  It would certainly have astonished me to learn that years later I would look back on this episode and ask myself if it represented a so-called fork in the road – which in turn led me to drunkenly wonder if the course of a relationship of love was truly explicable in terms of right turns and wrong turns, and if so whether it was possible to backtrack to that split where it all went wrong, or if in fact it was the case that we are all doomed to walk in a forest in which all paths lead one equally astray, there being no end to the forest, an inquiry whose very uselessness led to another spasm of wayward contemplation…”

- an excerpt from “Netherland” by Joseph O’Neill

If you don’t take advantage of your local library system, you’re crazy. Free books!? I would say that the NYPL is probably one of the better systems. I go online, search for the book I want, place an electronic request and a few weeks later it shows up at my local branch and they send me an electronic notification. My branch is the Jefferson Market Branch and it’s quite an architectural gem. I still need to check out the garden…

In case you were curious, I’ve been reading:

• The End of Poverty by Jeffery Sachs (currently reading)
• The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine (illuminating)
• Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer (in progress)
• The Best American Science Writing 2006 (excellent story about yawning!)
• Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar (still…)
• Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris (funny)
• The Omnivore’s Delimma by Michael Pollan (taking quite a while to get through…)
• The Shangri-La Diet by Seth Roberts (interesting but too strange)
• The Guy Not Taken by Jennifer Weiner (token female fiction)

Harvard professor Tal Ben-Shahar was on the Daily Show this week promoting his book “Happier” – a book about positive psychology. Given that my psychology recently seems to suffer from a lack of positive, I was thinking of spending some of my newly earned over-minimum-wage dollars to procure it. My concern, though, outside of the mere fact of purchasing what the author calls an “unashamedly” self-help book, is that it would all be information I’ve read, heard, processed and discounted before.

A few months ago, in fact, I came across an article by productivity blogger John Wesley about five different ways to “build a wonderful life.”

1. Live Below Your Means
2. Put Your Money to Work
3. Educate Yourself
4. Develop Lasting Personal Relationships
5. Work Towards a Dream You’re Passionate About
6. Bonus: Stay in Shape

My sarcastic, defensive side says, “duh” to this list. It’s like when people reduce the obesity crisis in this country to a mathematical equation (calories in> calories out). Well yes, perhaps that’s the root of it, but does that simplification provide any helpful answers or solutions?

This list makes perfect sense to me. I’ve got the first half completely under control, it’s the latter three that pose a challenge. It’s not that I can’t understand that having “lasting personal relationships” would make me happier. Frankly, I wouldn’t say it’s that I haven’t tried either. Moving on from failure is really the challenge there. Can a book on positive psychology spend a lot of time on how to address failure? Can I be positive enough to absorb what’s being said? Can you be too un-positive for a book about positive thinking?

You can’t force lasting personal relationships – but you can allow yourself to be more open to them. With every failed relationship, disappointing encounter, or faded friendship it becomes a little harder to open up, a little easier to just close myself off. To not take risks. To not keep trying. In the game of risks and rewards, when you can’t see the prize, it’s harder to take the leap.

I’ll let you know what the professor has to say.

Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Your baby grows a tooth, then two,
and four, and five, then she wants some meat
directly from the bone. It’s all

over: she’ll learn some words, she’ll fall
in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet
talker on his way to jail. And you,

your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue
nothing. You did, you loved, your feet
are sore. It’s dusk. Your daughter’s tall.

On Tuesday I finished the fluff fiction that’s been keeping me company for the past week. While the first half of the book was entertaining, it was in reading the latter half that discovered passages that might as well have been a page from my diary. Having read it, and lived it, I can’t imagine any reality in which the author herself didn’t experience those same feelings. I can’t fathom that the words could be so genuine without having actually been real to her. I’m intrigued that a person who thought those thoughts became a person who could write them down and share them with everyone.

Now the real question is… what color should I paint my finger and toenails for my friend’s wedding on Saturday?

Example 1: Zoe Keating

Zoe Keating – Sun Will Set
This piece of “layered cello” is alluring and calming. And even more impressive live. A single cello and digital looping device with foot pedals.

Example 2: John Irving

“When he needed to hold her hand, his fingers could see in the dark.”
An exquisite sentence.

Example 3: Eva Solo

The teamaker.
Beauty in design.

Example 4: Chromasia

“there’s nothing on“
“motion blur“
Consistently appealing and exceptional photography.

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman

White Bears and Other Unwanted Thoughts by Daniel Wegner

Controlling Human Heredity by Diane Paul